Bit of Mercy
by Rajko
Summary: It's Sam's turn to pick-up the pieces for Dean.


**Title**: Bit of Mercy  
**Author**: Rajko  
**Fandom**: Supernatural  
**Rating**: Teen  
**Disclaimer**: The characters depicted in this story are owned by a variety of studios, executives, producers and writers. The actors who portray these characters are their own person. I have done nothing but play in their sandbox (and steal all their cookies).  
**Warnings**: references to torture, religion, and (off-camera) ritualistic self-mutilation  
**Notes**: This story goes rogue somewhere around mid-season five and ignores a lot of newly revealed canon from the season finale.  
**Summary**: The smell in the bar is stale and musty, like the sawdust on the floor has been left to rot, and Sam can do nothing but watch his brother.

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**Bit of Mercy**  
by Rajko

The smell in the bar is stale and musty, like the sawdust on the floor has been left to rot, and Sam can do nothing but watch as his brother trails his fingers over the worn edges of the bar top, short blunt fingernails digging into old grooves. He's been doing this a lot lately: watching his brother. Waiting for the moment that he shows physical signs of wear and tear, of waning from too much inactivity, too much peace, too much limelight.

He knows it isn't easy, for either of them, but it's his brother he's worried about the most. Ever since the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't, Dean has become quieter than he used to be. More contemplative. More fragile. Like the weight of the world is still resting on his shoulders and he's haunted by the ghosts of what-might-have-been.

Death. Destruction. Mass suicides. The screaming howls of babies slaughtered in their cribs and the sound of weeping mothers burning in their skin. Brothers and fathers running through the forest, totting guns and tasting tears as their family falls apart around them.

It all could have happened, would have happened, if they hadn't stopped it and everyone – _everyone_ – knows it. Sometimes even better than themselves. Chuck has made sure of that.

Sam has lost count of the number of times someone has stopped them to touch their skin, whisper their names like sacred prayers, and wait for them to say some form of benediction. They are the Golden Children; The Soldiers of Heaven; The Divine Balance; The Brothers. They are holy figures to these people, beyond the realm of Man and beneath the divinity of Heaven.

They are no longer mere mortals, they are something else, and he thinks that is killing his brother. Dean was never cut out to be anything but human – perfectly imperfect and hopelessly flawed – and now he is seen as some sort of Light Bringer, who fights the darkness before the dawn, and Sam is helpless to stop it. Helpless to do anything but watch his brother fade beneath the weight of remembered and imagined responsibility.

It's not as though he is personally unaffected, either. He feels the same weight every moment of every day because he is the Dark to Dean's Light. He is the Yang to Dean's Yin. He and his brother are The Balance that must and always be maintained but unlike Dean, the horrible weight of what-could-have-been is tempered by sunshine and moonlight, chili dogs on hot dog buns and chintzy artwork on motel room tables.

It is tempered by Dean: his brother, his best friend, and his soul mate. They are everything and nothing together and it has taken him blood and pain and ultimate betrayal to see that he is _nothing_ without Dean and Dean is _everything_ without him. It doesn't matter, of course, because the time when all of that did matter has long since passed but even so, the thought brings him comfort while it brings his brother pain and that, if nothing else, tears at him.

He wants his brother to experience his life unburdened, perhaps for the first time ever, and not have this need to be out there always, ready and waiting on a long stretch of road. He wants Dean to wake-up and putter around the kitchen of the house they have yet to buy, flirt shamelessly with their old-lady-neighbor and charm her out of two helpings of pie, and sleep the sleep of a free man who has done everything he was supposed to do before it was too late.

It's a wish and promise that he knows he can't keep because Dean is wasting away in front of him and he has too little time and too much to do. But he is a Winchester and he is his brother's best, last, and only hope and he won't let him go without a fight. Not now. Not ever.

"So," he says when his brother finishes his inspection of the bar top and moves on to the dusty old pool table with its faded green felt. "What do you think? I know it's not much to look at but, well – what do you think?"

"Needs a lot of work," Deans replies, spinning a ball between his fingers on the table. They both watch as it twirls a wide arc before knocking against the cue ball and slipping into a pocket. "But it's not bad. Not bad at all. You planning on buying it, Sammy?"

It's a casual question, with no weight and no inflection, and Sam doesn't bother to say 'we' not 'me' and that he already bought it two weeks ago when he saw his brother's eyes light up when they passed it, decrepit and decaying on the side of the interstate. Dean doesn't do charity, least of all from him, and even though that isn't what this is about, that's what he'll think it is, and so he just shrugs and says: "thinkin' about it. Figure we could fix it up. Get off the road for a while."

His big brother nods like that's everything he's expecting and twirls another ball. It clinks hard against a solid and rolls away. "Would be nice to be somewhere for once. Not much in the way of hunts these days, anyway."

Nodding, Sam leans against the bar, hands finding their way into the pockets of his jeans. Hunting is something of a joke these days. There's too much attention on the things that they do and the places they go that it's like living life in a fishbowl, with the world for an audience. Things like hunting aren't even worth trying anymore.

"Think I might put in an offer then," he responds before the silence between them can drag out and turn bright white and painful. "Maybe before we grab some lunch..?"

"Sounds like a plan," Dean says, casual disinterest in every line of his body. Sam doesn't buy it for a minute and hopes – _prays_ – that this will be enough to build something good and simple between them. Something that his brother can hold on to, at least for a while.

"Okay," he nods, using his elbows to push away from the bar. Its surface leaves dirty lines of dust on his over shirt, branding him with pale tan lines. "I'll go give them a call. You think about what you wanna eat while I'm outside – no junk food, please."

"Cheeseburger," his brother retorts, hazel eyes cutting to him over his shoulder. There's a growth of stubble along the line of his jaw, pale enough to be translucent in the sun but strangely dark in the dim lighting. It makes him look like a different person altogether and Sam has to fight down the urge to drag him out the bar and into the sunlight. "It's part of any basic food group."

Sighing, Sam shakes his head and trudges towards the doorway. "I won't be long."


End file.
